The sun was reluctant to rise. Dusk clung to the land, the horizon a thin line of gold that grew no fatter as dawn aged into proper day. Swollen clouds gathered in the distance. Their bellies were white, the edges dark as smoke. The promise of some unpleasantness or another hung over Elsendorf. Its arrival was a matter of time rather than chance.

Victor grunted. The sound echoed in the silence, accompanied by the meaner thud of steel biting into wood. A halved log fell at Victor's feet. It joined a pile of cut wood as its place on the chopping block was taken by another log. The axe descended again and again, picking up speed until it swung with nothing waiting for its blade.

Victor stilled. The axe was embedded deep into the tree stump he used as a stand. Victor let go of the handle. His hands were stiff with cold and prolonged tension, his forehead wet with sweat. The wind burned his back. Victor barely felt the cold. His eyes were on the sky, leeched of all color.

There would be no work in the village today. Elsendorf would hunker down until the storm passed, not unlike a rabbit in a burrow. Victor planned the same for his household. There were tasks enough to keep all three of them busy, and well away from any danger the weather may pose.

The thought did nothing to calm Victor's blood. A familiar restlessness itched under his skin. Victor smiled without humor. He had thought age might dull his need for risk and adventure. That, or death. But a man did not change so easily and death had played uncharacteristically coy. Victor's life was, at present, as picturesque as it got – forced isolation and persecution from the highest law in the land aside.

A loud crash sent crows rising from the nearby fields in a storm of feathers and shrill shrieks.

Victor broke into a dead run. His feet beat at hard land, then stone, then wood as he burst in through the front door. The initial disturbance was no more. A different commotion was taking place inside the house; the intruder had attempted to enter through the back.

Victor followed the noise to its source. He saw Sofia first. The girl pounded on the back door. Her voice emerged as stifled screams, as awful as the crows' garbled cries. The door shook. Not from her assault, but due to something being repeatedly slammed against it from the outside.

"Sofia," Victor called.

The girl threw a wild-eyed look over her shoulder. She did not seem to recognize Victor for a moment. The fear in her eyes was incoherent. Victor was prepared to move her bodily, but she darted away before he reached her, giving way. Victor wrenched the door open.

Malik slammed into him, the boy's back colliding with Victor's chest. Victor took the cub's weight without slowing his own advance. He wrapped an arm around the boy and flung him into the house, blocking the door with his own body.

A woman with red hair and sharp teeth grinned at him from beyond the threshold. Her eyes were hollow. They pierced through flesh and muscle, seeking something far more precious.

"We have a debt to settle," the demon purred.

"I have made no deals with your kind," Victor told her.

The demon ignored his words. Her eyes slid down Victor's body. "Perhaps you could lose the axe? It is a good look on you – very masculine – but it does give a lady pause."

Victor had not been entirely aware of the axe still in his hand. He gripped it now, expression hard. Unenhanced weapons were of little use against the woman's kind. Nonetheless, Victor had no intention of facing the demon unarmed.

The woman let out a theatrical sigh. Her haughty expression did a poor job of masking the tension running through her body. Victor reevaluated the situation. Demons chose their words and mannerisms carefully, both as false as the skins they wore while threading the lands Above. They did not betray genuine passions. Victor was certain that the creature before him was unaware of her own state, or the ease with which Victor could perceive her exhaustion.

Victor slowly lowered the axe. He lay it on the ground, the blade turned so it faced the wall. The demon watched him carefully.

"I am not here for you, soldier," she said.

There was a sudden flurry of movement inside the house. Victor moved so he blocked the doorway fully. The cub scratched at his back, trying to push through.

"You don't hurt her!" Malik snarled.

Victor kept still. He did not speak, much as he wished to bid Malik silent. The demon was obviously of unsound mind. Adding another stimulus to an already unstable situation was highly unwise.

"I am not here for her, either," the woman said.

The syllables fell strangely, the intonation all wrong. The creature was closer to the breaking point than Victor feared. The last time a demon had gone berserk in Samodevia, it had taken a member of the Dvor and another of its kind to halt the rampage. Neither was at hand at present.

"I pay my debts," Malik growled.

The demon's grin was wider than natural, exposing rows of sharp teeth. "You are my kind of man," she said.

"Let us speak inside," Victor said.

He forced himself to step aside. Sofia and Malik withdrew further into the house under his guidance. The demon advanced slowly, her wariness apparent.

Victor cleared his throat. "You seem to have...dropped something."

The demon paused her steps. She turned her hollow eyes to the body lying crumpled in the dirt some distance away.

"The price of friendship," the demon sighed, and went to collect her burden.

The corpse the demon carried on her back made a sorry sight. Victor studied the man through narrowed eyes, noting the bloody clothing and its old-fashioned splendor. When the demon shifted her shoulders, the man's face became visible. Victor almost reached for the discarded axe.

"He must remain outside," Victor said instead.

The demon raised her eyes to his. The smile on her face did not touch them. "You will treat a Vampire Lord like discarded trash?" she asked softly.

"He will be a danger if he wakens," Victor replied. He had sense enough not to engage the demon's accusation, ironic as it were for her to make a fuss when she was the one lugging the Vampire Lord in question around like a sack of potatoes.

"He will not be waking anytime soon," the demon said. She turned slightly, and Victor sucked in a cold breath. "Recognize the blade?" the demon cooed sweetly.

Victor stared at the golden sword thrust through the vampire's chest. He could make out but the tip of the short blade where it pierced the man's right shoulder, having first ripped its way through his heart. It was a sealing blade, blessed by the Queen and used to secure particularly dangerous state prisoners. Victor had not seen its like since the war. Only the Queen could remove the sword and lift the spell that bound the man into slumber.

Victor turned away from the demon's smirking face and led the way into the house. He kept the demon in his periphery, but did not intrude into her space. They would speak in the kitchen. Victor wondered, in the hazy fashion one regarded impossible things, whether he could reason Sofia into being absent during the coming conversation.

The kitchen door opened. Sofia stood in the doorway, Malik a growling shadow at her back.

Victor was reminded anew of the girl's bravery, and its inconveniences.

Sofia pointed at the dead man on the demon's back, then at a door further down the hall. "The master bedroom is unused," Victor translated. "You may leave your companion there."

"Much obliged," the demon drawled.

Victor chanced a moment of inattention while the demon settled her – by all appearances, quite dead – friend in Mrs. Korral's old bedroom. Malik was nearly vibrating with anxious energy. Sofia's quiet calm was startling in comparison, and painfully familiar. The girl reminded Victor of Ira with increasing frequency. Victor had never considered the Captain's conduct outside its practical benefits to their shared profession. He had come to know too much of Sofia's past not to wonder about Ira's childhood.

The demon sauntered out at last. She rolled her shoulders with a soft wince Victor could almost believe genuine.

"I will require all within this house under my eyes, while my friend is not," the demon said.

"The dead need no protecting," Malik grumbled.

Victor shot the boy a sharp look. Malik needed to learn to hold his tongue, if he planned to mingle in human society with any success.

The demon was still smiling. Her expressions were stiff and changed infrequently, Victor noted, not unlike the painted masks actors donned and shed to express drastic shifts in mood during theatric performances. Victor herded the children into the kitchen. The demon followed with slow, measured steps.

Sofia took a seat at the kitchen table. Victor glared Malik into a chair, and sat down himself.

The demon remained standing.

"I will speak what I mean," she said, "and you will answer as you must."

Victor inclined his head in acknowledgement. The air had grown thick and seemed to crumble once inhaled, drying tongue and throat. Shadows flashed around the room. Their edges were red, like dying embers.

The demon closed her eyes. Pain tightened her expression for a fleeting moment, perhaps a trick of the flickering light.

"There is someone I seek. You will aid my journey. In return, I will guarantee his safety," the demon told them.

Victor startled. He remembered Dimitri's demon at last, the red-haired woman who flit around Elsendorf in various shapes as they sought the culprit behind a number of strange deaths. What sort of deal had Lightning struck, to have a Helwalker go through so much trouble to recover his soul?

Sofia mouthed a name. Not a sound left her lips yet the demon's eyes snapped open, black lid to lid. They focused on Sofia with terrible intensity. Sofia glared back, unmoved.

"I mean to save him, little girl," the demon said, a slight smile tugging on her thin lips. "I give my word that he will come to no harm in my hands. Will you promise your help?"

Victor rose to his feet. Malik made an aborted motion toward Sofia, but neither word nor touch stopped the girl from decisively nodding her head.

"She knows not what she promises," Victor said angrily. "She is a child. The Queen's Law forbids–"

"I suggest you do not finish that thought," the demon cut in. "I do not take accusations of this kind lightly." Her voice was a growl, the sound of it beyond speech; it reached in Victor and rattled his bones.

"What do you want, then?" Malik demanded.

The kitchen grew dark. The demon's hair burned like live fire; it set her face aglow, her skin as white as a gravestone. Her eyes and mouth were filled with shadows. They shivered to the sound of her voice.

"I want your help, and nothing more. You will keep your souls. And I," she turned her hollow eyes to Victor.

"I will keep mine."

Victor bowed his head. The storm had come. How fitting, that its winds should carry Lightning's name.